Workshops (for students and young researchers)

Two parallel workshops will take place on Wednesday, 26th of September, from 15:00 till 19:00. You can chose between methodological workshop and cognitive psychology workshop.

The workshops are primarily oriented to students. Students can register for the workshops at the time of filling in the Registration form. Other participants who might be interested in the workshops, shall write to the Organizing Committee separately, or express their interest in the Registration form – final question (Question/messages for the organizing committee).

Cognitive psychology workshop with Andraž Matkovič: Basics of EEG and its use in the study of cognition (*click for an abstract)

Electroencephalography (EEG) is an electrophysiological method, which has been used to measure the electrical activity of the brain since the 1930s. In next decades, signal averaging has enabled the study of event-related potentials (ERPs) and since the 1960s EEG has been one of the primary tools to non-invasively study electrical activity of the brain. Excellent time resolution has made EEG ideally suitable in studies of perception, attention and other cognitive processes. In the workshop we will cover the neural basics of EEG signal and compare it with other cognitive neuroscience methods. The focus will be on the widely used ERP technique. We will discuss the design and application of ERP experiments in cognitive neuroscience. Some of the most researched ERP components and their relations to cognitive processes will be presented. The last part of the workshop will briefly cover newer methods of EEG analysis such as time-frequency and connectivity analyses, which can significantly broaden the possibilities of EEG to foster our understanding of cognitive processes.

Andraž Matkovič is a teacher assistant and a researcher at the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) and at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). He teaches lab courses on cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience methodology. In his research he is mainly focused on the development of the methods for EEG analysis.

Methodological workshop with Luka Komidar: Comparing means: why does measurement invariance matter, what is it and how do we test it? (*click for an abstract)

In psychological research, we often compare means of independent groups of participants or means of one group over several points in time or dependent conditions. To make valid comparisons of means, our construct(s) of interest must be measured in the same way in different groups or time/conditions, or in other words, the observed scores of the participants have to depend only on their actual latent scores, and not on their group membership or time point/condition. This assumption is called measurement invariance (MI). The aim of the workshop is threefold: (i) to provide an answer to the question of why MI is a prerequisite for means comparisons, (ii) to present an intuitive and a technical definition of MI, and (iii) to equip the participants with basic knowledge for testing measurement invariance across independent groups in the framework of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA). The workshop will be divided into a theoretical part (an approximately one-hour lecture) and (an approximately three-hour) practical session. The participants will be required to bring their own laptops with the necessary software installed (R, RStudio, packages psych and lavaan; detailed instructions and materials will be provided a few days before the workshop).

Luka Komidar is an assistant professor of psychological methodology at the Department of Psychology in Ljubljana (Faculty of Arts, University in Ljubljana). He teaches psychological methodology, statistics, and psychophysical/experimental methods. His recent research work includes test development and adaptation, different phenomena in cognitive psychology, psychophysiological measurements, and using computerized methods for psychological assessment. He is also the editor of the Slovenian scientific journal Horizons of Psychology.

The 13th Alps-Adria Psychology Conference (AAPC18) has been financially supported by the Alps-Adriatic Alliance and Department of Psychology, University of Ljubljana.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, psihologija@ff.uni-lj.si